


I want to feel you smile

by Ladyboo



Series: Darlin' and the Doctor [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: AU, Blind!Jim, M/M, Unbeta'd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-23 23:24:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1583204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladyboo/pseuds/Ladyboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a stressed med student, Len just wanted a quiet place where he could sit and do his homework. And the Enterprise Cafe seemed like a nice, quiet place where he could do his homework. That is, until a blind man with a smile like the sun and eyes like the sky breezed into the place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Enterprise Café wasn't the usual haunt that the medical students at San Francisco University decided to bide their time after class.

There was no jarring music, no roaring crowd, and no television advertisements to get them more publicity. None of the workers were hipsters with their fabric layers and their retro references that made him feel impossibly older than his years. There was no screaming children, no brightly colored toys to be handed out with kids meals, and instead of having a play area, they had a bar, sleek wood dark and well used.

Really, that was probably one of the reasons he liked it so much.

He wasn't a regular, he wasn't, since he'd only dropped in once or twice after his classes, having found the place by accident. He knew they stayed open late though, that they had one of the best chicken sandwiches he'd tasted since he left home, and that the only kind of music ever allowed to play made him think of his Daddy's mullet band records. He knew that the booths were soft and well-worn with use, just like he knew that the tables were wide enough for his textbooks to be sprawled out across them with little overlay. He knew that the coffee was hot, that his cup never made it past half empty, and that there was an entire galaxy painted up on the ceiling.

It wasn't full of medical students, nor was it littered with post-graduate students who liked to gripe and snipe, and Leonard liked it that way, he liked it just fine.

Spread out in a booth in the corner, he was doing just that, his books spread out before him so he could flip through as many text chapters as he needed to try and get all the theorems and definitions down pat, all the practices, procedures and emergency surgical maneuvers he would need to possibly ever know. They got the occasional person in the Enterprise, a few older people who liked to keep away from the bustle, and a few of the high school students who liked to keep the gem to themselves, so he didn't bother looking up when the door chimed, and instead, stayed buried deep in his neuro-surgical text.

"Been a while since you've showed your face."

"Nyota, my beautiful, illustrious maiden, dare I say that you missed me? Why, have you finally come to your senses and decided to run away with me?"

Laughter, light and musical, drew his eyes up from his books, and he found the podium in the front where the little hostess station had been made. Dark skin bright and striking against the crimson of her uniform dress, the young woman was smiling, her teeth bright and white and her eyes dark, but she wasn't the one laughing even though she was smiling. No, the laughter belonged to the red haired girl behind the bar, with her riot of curls and the soft roundness of her cheeks. Yet, the hostess was smiling, a soft, fond sort of smile, and her fingers went out, scribbling something down on the board before her.

"I'd rather keep Spock company."

Except, the young man -blond, broad shouldered, with a pale mint shirt that set off his golden tan and jeans that hung low on his narrow hips- just laughed instead of looking insulted, and while Len couldn't see his face, he could see the way the man leaned against the podium, bracing his weight against it.

"Fine, I'll run away with Spock then. We'll have a big gay adventure up in Canada, where no one will bother us, and we'll have pancakes with real syrup and I'll made moose cheese. Did you know that’s a thing, moose cheese? And you can't milk a moose unless you're in a room that’s completely quiet, because if the cow gets scared, than her milk dries up and you won't get anything from her."

"Fascinating," An intrigued remark came from the kitchen area, and he watched as the blond perked up, his body straightening and his weight bouncing on his heels.

"Hey, Spock!"

"Greetings, Jim, it would be appropriate if you would take your seat, you neglected to bring a beverage to our shared Classical Literature lecture, and I am concerned about your level of hydration with the current level of heat we are experiencing."

A hand went up, waving in the direction of the kitchen, and then the young man turned away towards the booths and tables.

His face was handsome, features sharp with an angular jaw and a sculpted slope of his nose, wide lips and bright eyes. Even from a distance, he could see the color of them, blue and bright, vibrant, and something in his stomach gave a warm, heavy flop.

The man didn't look at him though, didn't even seem to see that he was there, for he just kept walking, with his fingers trailing over the backs of chairs and booths before he fell into one that sat before the panel of windows. His long legs stretched out, toes bumping against the other booth seat, and he tipped his face into the sunlight with a soft sort of smile, eyes shutting.

Nyota wandered over to him after a moment, with a tall glass of water that clanked with ice when she set it down, and the sharp look she shot Len was enough to remind him he was staring. His gaze dropped, trying to absorb the ink once more, and he felt his skin flushing with embarrassment.

"Glass is at your two o'clock, straw or no straw?"

"No thanks Ny."

Brow furrowing, Len fought with himself to not look up, grasping instead to the fact that she'd had to tell him where the drink was, as if he couldn't see it for himself. Pausing, lifting his head again, he thought back to a few chapters before, and the notion of blindness crossed his mind even as he tried not to turn and look.

More soft words between them, things he tried to ignore, and then a shadow fell over him, blocking out the light for his books. Looking up, a scowl on his face, he felt himself shrink away a bit from the sharp, calculating look on her pretty face. She planted a hand on the table, just as slender and elegant as the rest of her, and leaned in close enough to speak on a whisper.

"Regardless of if he can see you or not, you're a med student, Leonard, and you should know its rude to stare at people with a disadvantage."

He did shrink then, sliding down a bit in his cush booth seat, and his fingers curled in the denim at his thigh.

"I wasn-"

"Talk to him, Leonard, he doesn't bite."

And then she straightened, turning from him with a swish of her long ponytail and a sway to her step, calling out to Spock that she needed the usual and a fresh pot of coffee.

Talk to him, she said, like that was something easy to do. Grumbling, he turned his eyes down to his text books once more, more than just a bit unhappy that he'd been put in his place like a child. Instead, he stared at his notes with a scowl on his face, tapping the eraser end of his pencil against the table in his frustration. He was a grown man damnit, not a blushing school girl, he could stare at an attractive man if he damn well pleased, and he would talk to said man if he damn well felt like it.

Except, he had the horrible feeling that he would do something stupid, like call the golden man darlin'.


	2. I want to feel you smile

There was a completely valid reason as to why he had skipped out on Carol and Christine.

He had a practical to study for, because he needed to know every nerve ending and every valve in a human heart for his automated exam. There was a paper on his laptop that was far from being finished that was supposed to be a minimum of ten pages and he only had about two. He needed to do his laundry, it had started to pile up in the corner of the room and he couldn't tell what was clean from what was dirty anymore. He needed to get some sleep before his night shift at the hospital, because he had food and textbooks to buy, and child support was still a thing.

He had a lot of completely valid reasons for skipping out on Carol and Christine, because he was a grown man damnit, he had things that had to be done.

He was twenty-five, and there were things that he needed to do just like there was a desire to have his degree already under his hands and safe under his belt.

Except there wasn't a valid reason at all for the fact that he was, once again, in the Enterprise Café.

Nyota hadn't been behind little hostess podium, no one had been actually, but he'd received a catcall from the direction of the bar as soon as he'd walked in. Round cheeked and flushed rosy, the red head behind the bar had given him a toothy grin, her riot of curls piled high upon her head. She'd waggled her fingers at him, told him her name was Gaila, and she'd made him a tall glass of tea that was as sweet as any his Mama would ever make.

He'd taken a seat at the same booth as last time after a few minutes of talking to her, finding out she was an engineering major who had more brains than her pretty face showed, and his laptop was before him with a medical journal pulled up on the main page.

The music was different, seductive croons of Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole replacing the sultry cries of ACDC and Led Zepplin, and he'd located the docking station behind the bar where an iPhone had been plugged in for the tunes. A smile tipped at his lips, and he took a sip of his tea even as he raised the glass in a bit of a toast to Gaila where she swayed behind the counter. The women were at war then it seemed, with the music choices that the establishment played, and the differences in their tastes were endearing if not striking.

Gaila seemed more like the love ballad type of girl than the heavy guitar anyway.

Quickly, he became engrossed in the medical journal before him, absent minded to the rest of the world around him as he read. Songs filtered past, Dean Martin to Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong popping his head in once or twice, but he didn't pay much mind as he scanned through the electronic pages. Their voices lulled him, striking a conversation within his head about love and the merits of it, classical olden music bathing their words.

"Jimmy!"

Gaila's sharp gasp drew his attention, because the sound was hardly one of pleasure, and instead, he caught the tail end of her movements as the curvaceous red head hefted herself up and over the counter in a flurry of movement.

Turning his head, he caught sight of the same golden man from the other day, and the walls of his stomach turned cold and squeezed, hard.

The man's skin was torn in places, turning purple already in others, and red stained his pink shirt to turn it into a dark macabre of color. One of his arms was wrapped tight around his middle, and the other hung at an awkward angle at his side like the shoulder had come clean out. The skin around one of his brilliant eyes was dark with blood under the skin, and some of it dribbled from his nose.

Leonard was out of his booth and rushing toward them before he thought about it.

"Damnit kid, what'd you do, take a fall down a damn stairwell?"

He didn't know the man, not personally, and that was a shame, but he couldn't dwell on it as he watched the golden, red and purple stained man flinch. Gaila had slipped an arm around his waist, jostling his arm, and Leonard watched as his jaw tensed and he exhaled sharply through his teeth.

The smile he got was blinding though, brilliant even if it was pained, and it felt like a punch to the solar plexus.

"Ferguson and s'me of his boys decided they wanted my wallet."

The way he said it, coupled with the wobbling shrug, had Len's blood boiling. Fists clenching, fingers cracking, he took a breath before slipping his arm gently around the man's waist. His skin was hot to the touch, and he could feel tight muscles rippling under his hands, but he didn't have the time to dwell on that now.

"Gaila, can you be a gem and get me a First-Aid kit?"

She nodded, giving him a wide look before disappearing into the kitchen. With her, there was a sudden chorus of Russian, a curse of something that sounded oriental in nature, and a crash. Ignoring it, shaking his head, he wrapped his fingers around the pound of flesh he held and tipped his head to look down at the golden man.

"You're going to need a hospital for that sho-"

"Pop it back in."

Brow furrowing, leaning back, he watched as those brilliant eyes swept around the room, unseeing, before they landed just off his shoulder. Close as he was, he could see that they didn't have a single bit of cloud across them, no molecule disruption, meaning the boy hadn't been born that way.

"Come again?"

"I said," Speaking through gritted teeth, the golden man wiped the back of his hand under his nose to push away the blood, and succeeded in smearing it across his skin. There was a fierce look on his face, and it didn't seem to matter that the kid couldn't see him, because he was doing his best to be threatening and demanding all the same. "Pop it back in."

"Now listen here, I can't just go around puttin' bones back like some field medic, they must have beat your head in enough to give you a concussion if you think I'm going to ju-"

"Sulu!"

Len would like to say he didn't jump, but the man's voice boomed out, tone sharp and far from the wounded look that his image held. There was another crash from the kitchen, and then a slim Asian man was shoving his way out of the door and in their direction.

"Christ Jim, you look like shit."

Feeling out of place, he watched as those lips twitched up into a smile, wide as the first one had been, and felt the man shift out of his grip. Quickly, he angled them so that the man's hand would brace himself on the table, and eased away to feel at his ribs.

"Yeah yeah, and I bet you look good enough to eat. Do me a favor and shove this back in." He swayed his torso, causing his limp arm to flop uselessly in the air, and Len watched as the man named Sulu grimaced. Fingers trailing across the wide ribcage, he felt for breaks under the bruising, slow and careful.

"Better not punch me for this."

Smile turning sharp, the man -Jim, his name was Jim- curled his fingers against the table top, and let out a bit of a laugh.

"Now, when have I ever punched you?"

Sulu shook his head, bracing a hand on Jim's shoulder blade and grasping his arm with the other, frowning with a bit of an unimpressed look.

"One,"

The crack that resounded was loud, muffled out only by the sharp grunt that Jim gave. His eyes shut tight, his body jerked a bit under Len's hands, and he waited a few ticks before he exhaled.

"Fuck,"

Watching as Sulu moved away, he went back to his poking, mindful of the breaths that he got in response, and only stopped with the man batted at him.

"Nothin's broke."

"You can't kno-"

"Trust me, I know what it feels like when my bones break." He was smiling again, wide and bright if not a bit pained, and he was looking straight at Len with those brilliant eyes. "Bruised ribs, relocated shoulder, couple of scrapes and bruises and a ruined shirt. I'm fine."

"Spock's going to kill you."

"Spock ain't gana know, now is he, Hikaru?"

Bustling her way between them, kit grasped in her hands, Gaila had a wide look on her face, a bit pale at the sight of his blood, and she shoved the kit over before scurrying away into the kitchen once more.

"You're supposed to be in a lecture with him right now, he's going to know."

Grunting, Jim swore, hands scrambling across the table till he lowered himself into a seat.

"Go away Hikaru."

Raising both hands, the Asian man had a bit of a dip in his step when he turned.

"Don't jump the Southern Gentleman, he seems a bit grouchy."

Before he could be insulted, even though his brow furrowed, Len watched as Hikaru waltzed back into the kitchen, leaving him and Jim alone in the dining area. Laughter, slight and exasperated, drew his gaze back down, and he frowned harder at the man.

"Fuck do you think is funny?"

"Was going to skip my lecture t'day anyway, Ny said she saw you on her way to class headed this way. Heard you talkin' last time you were in, recognized your voice 'cuz I've heard you round campus with the med students."

"Hell were you lookin' for me for?"

Stomach clenching, gut feeling liquid and hot, Len did his best to ignore the feeling as he took the antiseptic wipe and rubbed it across Jim's face to clean away the blood.

"Wanted to get your name."

"Darlin', you wandered across campus instead of going to your lecture, got the shit kicked out of you, because you wanted my name?"

It wasn't till the words were out and in the air that he noticed what he'd said, and Len felt himself flush with embarrassment. He wasn't the only one though, because as he watched, a pink blush of color spread across the golden tan on Jim's skin.

He shrugged, going quiet, and those brilliant, sightless blue eyes skirted away from him to drop down instead.

Frowning for as long as he could, he ended up with a smile on his face, and an exasperated sigh pulled from his chest as he went with cleaning the blood from Jim's arm.

"McCoy. Leonard McCoy."


End file.
